Aspects of a Union
by Ivory Novelist
Summary: In which John records certain important and non-work related qualities of his platonic marriage to Sherlock. Asexual!Sherlock/Straight!John. Chronologically follows my other 5 Sherlock fics.


A/N: Ha! Here I am again with a new installment.

**Asexual!Sherlock/Straight!John (platonic romance/nonsexual soul mates)**

I'm pretty sure this is the dictionary definition of pointless schmoop. Or maybe I could call it a "relationship study."

If you interested, I would listen to "The Secret Life of Daydreams" from the_ Pride and Prejudice OST_ as you read.

Please, review and let me know what you think!

;)

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><p>Aspects of a Union<p>

* * *

><p>John comes to understand that the Sherlock he knows is not the same one that everybody else knows. He knows their version, of course; in the beginnings of their acquaintance, Sherlock presented his public persona to John just the same as he would any stranger. And it isn't that Sherlock's public self is false; that version is just as alive in the privacy of 221B as it is outside. The difference is that John sees more than that—or maybe he evokes more from Sherlock, a possibility he chooses not to spend time exploring.<p>

Sherlock as John knows him would be utterly unbelievable to everyone else they know: the softness in him. It is Sherlock's emotional self, his emotional life, which John has exclusive access to. Yes, he sees the depression and the anger and the sulking and the full brunt of Sherlock's insane workaholism. None of that would surprise the outside world. It's the way Sherlock loves him and basks in John's love that would raise eyebrows. John wouldn't blame the world for such a reaction; his own feelings for Sherlock Holmes once had John finding himself unbelievable.

He has a notebook—which nobody knows about, not even Sherlock—in which he records anything and everything he doesn't want people reading in his blog. He takes it with him to work so that he can write in it out of Sherlock's sight, whenever he has downtime. After they marry, a list begins to take shape in the notebook, of all the things about his strange and wonderful relationship with Sherlock that would strike the world as utterly incongruous with Sherlock's character.

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><p><em>Hugging<em>

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><p>They don't hug nearly as much as they cuddle, which might sound odd. Hugs seem to happen in direct connection with emotional disturbance, a gesture they use to provide comfort. John hugs Sherlock far more than the other way around.<p>

When Sherlock is flapping around the flat, strung out on stress or frustration about a case he's working, John won't watch for more than a few minutes before he coaxes him to stand still so that John can hug him. It's like pinning down a panicky animal and talking it calm. John can always feel the energy buzzing in Sherlock's body, it's moving so fast, and in the first few minutes of the hug, it's as if Sherlock wants to jump out of his own skin. They never say much during these hugs. John could tell Sherlock to stop driving himself crazy and relax, but that would be an utterly futile thing to do. Instead, they stand together, hugging, as Sherlock takes a few moments to breathe and center himself. It is not uncommon for him to have an epiphany directly after pulling out of this hug, which may be the main reason he tolerates it at all.

They also make a habit of hugging in the aftermath of a particularly close-call with death, while on a chase or case-related incident. It's closely split down the middle, the times John initiates compared to the ones when Sherlock does. For example, there was the time when John was nearly shot—

_Sherlock doesn't even wait until they're safely in a private area. He rushes at John, completely ignoring the body of the gunman now making a blood puddle on the ground, and pulls him desperately by one side of his unzipped jacket into a tight hug. John can feel Sherlock's racing pulse, the wind knocked out of him by the taller man's force. _

"_I'm all right," John says, blinking against Sherlock's shoulder. "Sherlock. Really."_

_As Sherlock continues to hold onto him, John starts to pick up on it through their clothes: the other man is trembling, body almost vibrating against John. So he doesn't push Sherlock away, lets him hold on for as long as he needs. _

And the time Sherlock was thrown into the Thames and nearly drowned—

_They're both soaked from head to foot, freezing from the water and the air, the foul taste of the river in their mouths, their breath white before them. Sherlock lies on his back as John crawls up alongside him, and he's pale, so pale he could be dead. John's hand fists into Sherlock's suit jacket as he looks at him, feels Sherlock gasping beneath him and his heart still beating, sees those clear blue eyes looking up at him. _

"_You're alive," John says, only then realizing his own panting as he hears it. Sherlock doesn't answer or even nod, head dropping to the right and eyes closing. John pushes himself up and pulls Sherlock with him, arms wrapping around him. They're so cold, they've already started to go numb, and their sopping clothes squish together as John hugs him. Sherlock is limp, head on John's shoulder and arms taking a few moments to move up and return the hug. John can't think of anything right then. Just that they're alive. Sherlock is alive. _

* * *

><p>Once, John was in the kitchen making tea, and Sherlock swooped in and wrapped his arms around him from behind, chin down in John's shoulder. John could feel him smiling without seeing his face. He was happy for some reason. It surprised John in the best way.<p>

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><p><em>Cuddling<em>

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><p>Cuddling appears to be Sherlock's second favorite activity, after working. If anyone had informed John of this upon their initial meeting, he would've thought them completely off their rocker. He's sure if their mutual acquaintances knew (Lestrade and the whole bunch), they wouldn't believe it either. Sherlock may even be a little surprised at himself; John's certain he never did much cuddling prior to their relationship.<p>

But it's daily, now. Except for the occasional row between them, in which case Sherlock sulks impressively or disappears altogether until John's anger has waned.

They cuddle on the sofa at night, after dinner, as they watch telly. Sometimes, John sits upright, while Sherlock curls against his side, head on John's collarbone, or lies down with his head in John's lap. Other times, the two of them lie across the length of the sofa together, John listening to the telly but not watching it since he lies on his back and would have to turn his neck at an uncomfortable angle. Sherlock watches, his head on John's chest, the most quiet and still he ever is awake. John can smell Sherlock's expensive shampoo. He kisses the top of Sherlock's head for no reason at all, and Sherlock hums at that.

They cuddle sometimes on lazy Sundays when Sherlock doesn't have a case and the weather isn't amenable to their going out. When it rains, they curl up on the sofa and have a kip, John in his soft cable jumper and Sherlock hidden beneath a blanket. It's the only circumstance in which Sherlock sleeps during the daytime.

They cuddle when Sherlock is in the first stage of a black mood; John learns to catch it early because once the peak of it comes on, Sherlock wants nothing to do with anyone, not even him. In fact, cuddling becomes John's number one remedy for making Sherlock feel better, whether he's sad or stressed or frustrated or bored. A few times, they hear whispers of Moriarty, and John draws Sherlock into his arms and tells him gently that they're all right, it's all fine.

"It's going to be okay," John says softly. "I love you."

"I know," says Sherlock, his body relaxed but his mind flaring with worry. "I love you too."

John hears the deep, resounding pain in his voice when he says it and holds him closer, tighter, trying to say without words what neither of them can ever know: _we'll both survive. _

Most of all, they cuddle in bed. Every night—except for those more and more infrequent nights where John stays over at a woman's flat—John goes to bed in his room, falls asleep, and wakes up again an hour or two later when Sherlock slips in beside him after he's had enough of work. They find each other in the dark, sometimes John spooning Sherlock and other times Sherlock spooning John. One or the other will roll away in the night, usually Sherlock who's used to taking up an entire bed, but they always come back together. It's peaceful sleep, unconscious love, what teaches them so well each other's smell and breath and heartbeat and warmth. This is the only place where Sherlock feels safe, John has deciphered. It isn't that Sherlock cares about being unsafe otherwise; he just enjoys the feeling of safety here, when he has it.

On those mornings when Sherlock doesn't wake up at seven to work on something, John wakes to see him there in bed and wonders at how they've fallen into this sort of relationship. He wonders at his own capability for engaging in such a strange but perfect thing. He wonders how he could love another man the way he loves Sherlock: with all of himself, yet without the slightest sexual desire. He wonders what's happened to him, what Sherlock has done to him.

Then Sherlock opens his eyes and sees him and smiles with one side of his mouth and John wonders how he could ever be anywhere else.

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><p><em>Kindness for no reason<em>

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><p>John comes home one afternoon to find two dozen cream roses in a vase on the sitting room table. He stops when he sees them, approaches and looks at them with a wondering expression. They're unassuming, as if they've always been there. No note or anything. He leans over and sniffs at them, and when he straightens back up, he smiles. No one's ever given him flowers before.<p>

* * *

><p>Except for the pocket watch Sherlock gave John as a wedding present, they've never exchanged gifts or even cards on their anniversary. Usually, it's a quiet dinner somewhere moderately expensive and a walk through Hyde Park, neither of them actually acknowledging the occasion out loud.<p>

But on their third anniversary, John hails a cab after they've had dinner, not telling Sherlock where they're going. When they arrive at the London Eye, Sherlock just says,

"It's after hours."

"Never mind that," says John, leading him onto the premises.

They do indeed get on, and Sherlock guesses John made a call to Mycroft to arrange this. They're the only two people there—and without all the crowds, it's surprisingly pleasant even to Sherlock, who would usually sneer at the idea of boring tourist attractions and sappy romantic gestures. He and John sit quietly in their capsule, staring out at the city as they slowly rise to the top. Sherlock smiles softly to himself when he sees all of London spread out below them; beautiful, he thinks.

"Here," John says when they hover at the top of the wheel's revolution. He holds out a small box in wrapping paper. Sherlock takes it with raised eyebrows.

"I didn't get you anything," he says.

"It's all right. Think of it as a very late wedding present."

Sherlock tears off the wrapping paper and lets it fall to the floor between his shoes, opens the box and silently stares at what's inside.

A ring—fourteen karat white gold, by the look of it—plain on the outside. But when he takes it out of the box, he catches sight the engraving on the inside:

_My Heart J.W. _

Sherlock looks at John, blue eyes full of emotion, and John just looks softly back and smiles a bit. Sherlock slips the ring onto his finger and considers the way it looks there, clean and simple on the surface. He sets his elbows on his knees and stares out the glass straight ahead of him, unable to speak. John sits close, and they don't say a word the rest of the way down.

It isn't until they're sitting in the cab again, on their way home, that Sherlock notices an identical ring on John's finger.

What he doesn't see is his own name engraved on the inside.

* * *

><p><em>Kisses<em>

* * *

><p>The kisses are John's area. It seems something Sherlock finds usually beneath himself, but he always smiles whenever John gives him one.<p>

When Sherlock has his head on John's chest or shoulder, John turns and kisses his hair when he's feeling particularly affectionate.

Once, when Sherlock was being wheeled into an ambulance (again), John followed alongside him, their hands clasped. He lifted Sherlock's hand to his mouth and kissed between the first two knuckles. Sherlock smiled.

On his way out to work weekday mornings, when Sherlock's sitting at the table having breakfast or tea or reading on the sofa or thinking in his armchair, John kisses him on the forehead or the temple. Quick, so quick that Sherlock might think it a meaningless habit after a while. But he knows John better than that.

There was one exception: a morning when the two of them sat across from each other at the table in the sitting room, having breakfast and talking only a little as Sherlock skimmed the paper. When John finished eating, he took his dishes into the kitchen; Sherlock remained in his seat, reading an article about a recent scientific discovery made by a university chemist. He didn't pay John any attention, assuming the other man was about to go upstairs for a shower, so when John returned to the table and stood at Sherlock's side, he didn't have any time to anticipate. In the same moment he looked up from the paper to see what John wanted, John took Sherlock's face in both his hands and planted a dry kiss at the top of Sherlock's forehead. He held the kiss for a long beat, his eyes closed, and Sherlock closed his own with a pleased smile just barely on his mouth. When John pulled away, hands still holding Sherlock's face, he looked down into those bright blue eyes and told Sherlock he loved him, the words spoken slow and deliberate. Sherlock just stared up at him, smiling, without saying a word.

Although! There was the day Lestrade's team finally discovered that John and Sherlock had married. Naturally, they were at a crime scene when the secret accidentally slipped out, earning a room full of confused, astounded, and (in Anderson's case) mildly disgusted looks.

"How could anyone want to marry that freak?" Anderson said.

"Please, don't call him that," John answered quietly, frowning.

"I didn't know you were gay, Watson," Donovan said with an arched eyebrow.

"He isn't," said Sherlock, smirking with an obscene amount of smugness.

Now the room was beyond confused, except for Lestrade who hovered around the door with a heavily suppressed eye roll, the kind parents often use when they find their children utterly ridiculous and beyond hope of reform.

"Nor is Sherlock, I might add," John said, watching him crouch over the dead body with his pocket magnifier.

"You're taking the piss out of us," said Donovan.

Sherlock rose to his feet, snapping off his rubber gloves. "I don't know which is more astounding about you lot: your complete lack of logic or your nonexistent observational skills. Obviously, Dr. Watson is a heterosexual who still has moderate interest in pulling with women, and if you absolutely must know, I'm asexual. If you're ignorant on that subject too, do your own research, I haven't the time or the patience to educate you. Lestrade, I have to see a man about a clock, and I won't be able to give you a conclusive analysis until then."

He steps around the corpse to John's side and suddenly plants a kiss on John's cheek.

"Come on, Doctor," he says, showing off his smile to everyone as he pulls John toward the door. John follows without asking where they're going, face pink and warm, a foolish quirk to his mouth.

* * *

><p><em>Food<em>

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><p>Sherlock does indeed do the shopping from time to time. He hates it, finds it unbelievably dull, but he does it for John.<p>

They are never out of jam. And John isn't the one who buys it either, replacing the near empty jar with a brand new one before it can even become an issue. It isn't an ordinary, cheap brand from Tesco either; it's organic jam made imported from a farm in the country, delicious and expensive. He always smiles a bit when he opens the fridge and sees the jar there.

When Sherlock doesn't have a case, he cooks. It took a while before he let on to John that he knew how…. And that he is (of course) quite good at it too. John doesn't help him because Sherlock's natural preference is still for working alone (John on a case being the one exception) and it seems that cooking is actually a soothing thing for him, the way solitary activities can be soothing. John also never asks him what he's making or requests anything special, but he's never disappointed. Sherlock, of course, knows what he likes without being told.

They steal food from each other's plate in restaurants without even thinking about it. Especially the bits they don't like of their own orders.

On off-nights, when there's no crime-solving to be done, they sometimes order takeaway and sit together on the sofa with it as they watch crap telly. Sherlock yells at the television the whole time, going on about how stupid those people are and what they're missing that's right under their noses. John has learned not to interrupt him, grinning to himself instead. Usually, it's Chinese or Thai food. And occasionally, John turns on the news before one of the bad shows start, and Sherlock scoffs and criticizes everything that isn't some potentially interesting case, while John opens all the cartons and lets out the steam and aromas. These nights are dear to John's heart; it feels like some kind of normalcy as they eat their way through too much unhealthy food and laugh at some stupid program and end up snuggling a bit by the time the meal is through.

Not that John has a problem with abnormal. If he did, he obviously wouldn't be here.

* * *

><p><em>Comfort<em>

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><p>Sometimes, John wakes up in the middle of the night for no reason and finds Sherlock sitting up on his side of the bed, feet on the floor, back to John. He calls him in the dark, sees—intuits—his emotions in the shape of Sherlock's silhouette. John moves across the bed toward him, lays his hand on Sherlock's back, says,<p>

_I'm here. _

And sometimes that's the wrong thing to say—because it's the thing keeping Sherlock awake.

John gets out of bed, rounds the end and sits next to him, puts an arm around his shoulders. And Sherlock leans against him, hides his face in the curve of John's neck, and they don't speak, except for John's thumb moving up and down a small spot on Sherlock's arm.

Sherlock doesn't know how to comfort people. It's a good thing John rarely needs it.

Perhaps it's also a good thing that John takes comfort in the simple sight of him.

* * *

><p><em>Nursing<em>

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><p>Sherlock Holmes is the worst patient in England, John decides. Between his appalling negligence of his own health and his complete intolerance for being sick once the illness has passed the point of denial, it's everything John can do to keep from resorting to tranquilizers. Fortunately, Sherlock doesn't get sick often. Seems to be a steady once-a-year pattern. John's surprised it doesn't happen more often, considering the way Sherlock barely eats or sleeps when he's on a case, which is frequently.<p>

In the thick of a bad cold, John forbids Sherlock working or leaving the flat, entrusting him to Mrs. Hudson's care during the day. He comes straight home from work at five o'clock, either to Sherlock's infuriated violin or to the sound of the telly, depending upon how ill Sherlock feels.

There is an ungodly amount of tea and soup because that's all a sick Sherlock will consume. (He loses far too much weight through an illness, and he's already too skinny to begin with.) John administers regular doses of medicine, keeps the area around the sofa well-stocked with tissues and water and reading material, heats up compresses for Sherlock's back or belly, makes sure there are always enough pillows and blankets in the nest Sherlock makes of the sofa. He lets Sherlock whine without chiding him about it and when Sherlock is silent with misery instead, John sits next to him and smoothes back his hair.

John acts if he should be given an award for nursing a sick Sherlock back to health, but secretly, he doesn't mind.

He is a doctor, after all.

* * *

><p>When John gets sick, it's never that severe, and he knows how to take care of himself. Sherlock constantly asks him if he needs anything and if he's any better yet. He tiptoes around the flat, deliberately not making any noise. He offers his lap as a pillow when John rests on the sofa and makes sure to spoon him gently when they go to bed. He goes to the store when they run out of things John needs, a written list in hand and no hesitation.<p>

That's the extent of Sherlock's care-taking skills, but John isn't complaining.

* * *

><p><em>Holding Hands<em>

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><p>It comes with time. They are both unused to the gesture, John in the context of doing it with another man and Sherlock inexperienced in general. It seems like something that should be reserved for particular moments, when a wave of affection for his partner comes over one of them. At first, it happens the way hugs usually do: in a crisis, when something goes wrong and one of them needs to be comforted. When they need to be sure of each other.<p>

Then, Sherlock solves one of his most difficult cases after two long weeks of working at it, and the relief that comes afterward is tremendous. He's standing at his favorite window in the sitting room, leaning against the wall next to it and looking outside, savoring a peace he actually welcomes now. John steps up alongside him and slips his hand in Sherlock's—and Sherlock glances at him, then back at the window, giving John's hand a squeeze.

They're riding in a cab, far apart as usual, Sherlock watching the city pass by. John takes his hand where it lays on Sherlock's thigh. They share a brief smile and do not let go until the ride is over.

Lestrade invites them to a New Year's Eve party that his team and colleagues at the Yard all attend, and in a room full of people kissing and knocking back champagne, Sherlock very quietly takes John's hand in his as they stand together watching the digital clock.

They lie in bed with the bluish light of early morning coming in through the sheer curtains, hands clasped between them and held up in the air, John's ring cool against Sherlock's fingers.

They never do it in public, out and about London. It isn't for the world to see and misinterpret.

Except—

One November day, when it's gray and cold and windy, they're walking fast on their way to continue an investigation and John's a bit behind Sherlock, whose legs are longer. Sherlock never slows down, just reaches out and takes John's hand.


End file.
